The oddly-named 1dawg is the latest of hundreds of
hopefuls to ride the online video wave. 1dawg’s differentiating factor is that it
provides a free video conversion service to a variety of mobile devices. It’s a seemingly
minor thing to do, but in the current era mobile devices often use incompatible media
formats – and so this really does scratch a decent itch for consumers. As 1dawg’s Adam
Fichman explained in an email sent round to media folks:
“Each portable media device, like an iPod or PSP, accepts a very limited number of
file extensions, if even more than just one […] What our company does is provide the
means for a video in an incompatible format to be available for whatever media device the
user wants to transfer it to.”
The devices supported currently include video iPod, Sony Playstation Portable,
Creative Zen, Zune, Video Cell Phone and a basic Windows/Mac/Linux compatible file
format. A few of those use MPEG-4, so mobile devices are not quite as incompatible as it
first appears.
Other than the file conversions, 1dawg is your typical video sharing site – very
similar to YouTube. I doubt the file conversions alone will be enough to get the network
effects going – it’s more a ‘feature’ than a business, as web 2.0 critics are wont to
say. Still, it’s a neat value add for the site and one I’d like to see YouTube and others
employ.
Note that there are plenty of
file conversion services around, but not many are part of an online video service. If
you know of other sites that already offer a file conversion feature, tell us in the
comments.
